1803 was a year of alarm and terror for England. It was widely believed that Napoleon planned to invade England, and didn't care how many men he lost. He was reputed to have said: "I can afford 10,000 men a day." The drawing shows this callous disregard for his troops at the same time it belittles Napoleon's capacity to successfully invade England. Napoleon sits on the shoulders of Talleyrand (an influential French diplomat and Minister of Foreign Affairs), peering through a rolled-up document. The document is Talleyrand's plan for the invasion, clearly a disaster from its inception since the French gunboats are outclassed by the British fleet. (Talleyrand was never a general.)